Located in the capital city of the United States, the newspaper has a particular emphasis on national politics. Daily editions are printed for the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia. The newspaper is published as a broadsheet, with photographs printed both in color and in black and white.

Unlike The New York Times and Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post does not print an edition for distribution away from the East Coast. In 2009, the newspaper ceased publication of its National Weekly Edition, which combined stories from the week's print editions, due to shrinking circulation.[12] The majority of its newsprint readership is in District of Columbia and its suburbs in Maryland and Northern Virginia.[13]

The newspaper's weekday and Saturday printings include the following sections:[when?]

Main section, containing the front page, national and international news, business, politics, and editorials and opinions

Metro section, containing local news

Style section, with feature writing on pop culture, politics, fine and performing arts, film, fashion, and gossip, along with advice columns and comics

Sunday editions largely include the weekday sections as well as Outlook (opinion), Arts, Travel, Comics, TV Week, and the Washington Post Magazine. The Sunday Style section differs slightly from the weekday Style section; it is in a tabloid format, and it houses the reader-written humor contest The Style Invitational.

Additional weekly sections appear on weekdays: Health & Science on Tuesday, Food on Wednesday, Local Living (home and garden) on Thursday, and Weekend, with details about upcoming events in the local area, on Friday. The latter two are in a tabloid format.

For many decades, The Post had its main office at 1150 15th Street NW. This real estate remained with Graham Holdings when the newspaper was sold to Jeff Bezos' Nash Holdings in 2013. Graham Holdings sold 1150 15th Street (along with 1515 L Street, 1523 L Street, and land beneath 1100 15th Street) for $159 million in November 2013. The Washington Post continued to lease space at 1150 L Street NW.[18] In May 2014, The Washington Post leased the west tower of One Franklin Square, a high-rise building at 1301 K Street NW in Washington, D.C. The newspaper will move to its new offices in 2016.[19]

The newspaper was founded in 1877 by Stilson Hutchins (1838–1912) and in 1880 added a Sunday edition, thus becoming the city's first newspaper to publish seven days a week. In 1889, Hutchins sold the newspaper to Frank Hatton, a former Postmaster General, and Beriah Wilkins, a former Democratic congressman from Ohio. To promote the newspaper, the new owners requested the leader of the United States Marine Band, John Philip Sousa, to compose a march for the newspaper's essay contest awards ceremony. Sousa composed The Washington Post. It became the standard music to accompany the two-step, a late 19th-century dance craze,[20] and remains one of Sousa's best-known works.

In 1898, during the Spanish–American War, The Post printed Clifford K. Berryman's classic illustration Remember the Maine, which became the battle-cry for American sailors during the War. In 1902, Berryman published another famous cartoon in The Post—Drawing the Line in Mississippi. This cartoon depicts President Theodore Roosevelt showing compassion for a small bear cub and inspired New York store owner Morris Michtom to create the teddy bear.[21]

Wilkins acquired Hatton's share of the newspaper in 1894 at Hatton's death. After Wilkins' death in 1903, his sons John and Robert ran The Post for two years before selling it in 1905 to John Roll McLean, owner of the Cincinnati Enquirer. During the Wilson presidency, The Post was credited with the "most famous newspaper typo" in D.C. history according to Reason magazine; The Post intended to report that President Wilson had been "entertaining" his future-wife Mrs. Galt, but instead wrote that he had been "entering" Mrs. Galt.[22][23][24] When John McLean died in 1916, he put the newspaper in trust, having little faith that his playboy son Edward "Ned" McLean could manage his inheritance. Ned went to court and broke the trust, but, under his management, the newspaper slumped toward ruin.

In 1954, the newspaper consolidated its position by acquiring and merging with its last morning rival, the Washington Times-Herald. (The combined paper was officially named The Washington Post and Times-Herald until 1973, although the Times-Herald portion of the nameplate became less and less prominent after the 1950s.) The merger left The Post with two remaining local competitors, the afternoon Washington Star (Evening Star) and The Washington Daily News, which merged in 1972 and folded in 1981. The Washington Times, established in 1982 by a subsidiary of the Unification Church, led by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon (1920–2012), has been a local conservative rival with a circulation (as of 2005[update]) about one-seventh that of The Post.[25] In the late 2000s additional editorially conservative competition increased with the foundation of the tabloid "The Examiner" of Washington by the new owners of the old Hearst paper, the "San Francisco Examiner" who engineered a swap trading the larger, more prosperous "San Francisco Chronicle" for the former Hearst "flagship" paper. They also started several other tabloid "Examiners" in several American cities, including briefly for two years in "Baltimore Examiner" going against the 170-year old "Baltimore Sun".

After Phil Graham's death in 1963, control of The Washington Post Company passed to Katharine Graham (1917–2001), his wife and Meyer's daughter. Few women had run nationally prominent newspapers in the United States. Katharine Graham described her own anxiety and lack of confidence based on her gender in her autobiography. She served as publisher from 1969 to 1979 and headed The Washington Post Company into the early 1990s as chairman of the board and CEO. After 1993, she retained a position as chairman of the executive committee until her death in 2001.

Her tenure is credited with seeing the newspaper rise in national stature through effective investigative reporting after it began to live down its reputation as a house organ for the Kennedy and Johnson administration, working to ensure that The New York Times did not surpass its Washington reporting of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate scandal. During this time, Katharine Graham also oversaw the Post company's diversification purchase of the for-profit education and training company Kaplan, Inc. for $40 million in 1984.[26] Twenty years later, Kaplan had surpassed the Post newspaper as the company's leading contributor to income, and by 2010 Kaplan accounted for more than 60% of the entire company revenue stream.[27]

In 1972, the "Book World" section was introduced with Pulitzer Prize–winning critic William McPherson as its first editor.[28] It featured Pulitzer Prize–winning critics such as Jonathan Yardley and Michael Dirda, the latter of whom established his career as a critic at The Post. In 2009, after 37 years, with great reader outcries and protest, "The Washington Post Book World" as a standalone insert was discontinued, the last issue being Sunday, February 15, 2009, along with a general reorganization of the paper, such as placing the Sunday editorials on the back page of the main front section rather than the "Outlook" section and distributing some other locally oriented "op-ed" letters and commentaries in other sections.[29] However, book reviews are still published in the Outlook section on Sundays and in the Style section the rest of the week, as well as online.[29]

In 1980, the newspaper published a dramatic story called "Jimmy's World",[30] describing the life of an eight-year-old heroin addict in Washington, for which reporter Janet Cooke won acclaim and a Pulitzer Prize. Subsequent investigation, however, revealed the story to be a fabrication. The Pulitzer Prize was returned.

Donald E. Graham, Katharine's son, succeeded her as publisher in 1979 and in the early 1990s became both chief executive officer and chairman of the board. He was succeeded in 2000 as publisher and CEO by Boisfeuillet Jones, Jr., with Graham remaining as chairman.

In 2010, the newspaper cited its local focus as a reason for running its first-ever front-page advertisement: the Capital One ad was being run to draw attention to the rebranding of Chevy Chase Bank, a bank Capital One bought in 2009. According to the Post's vice president of advertising, the page one advertisement is a "...very local, useful-information-for-our-readers type of campaign."[33]

In November 2012, Weymouth announced that Boston Globe editor Martin Baron would take over Brauchli's position on January 2, 2013.[34][35]

In 2013, the newspaper announced that it had plans to start charging frequent users of its website, with many exceptions (such as for government employees browsing from work, and for students browsing from school).[36][37]

Jeff Bezos purchased the newspaper for $250 million in cash, completing the transaction on October 1, 2013, after announcing the planned acquisition on August 5, 2013.[1][2][8] The newspaper is currently owned by Nash Holdings LLC, a holding company created for the acquisition and controlled by Bezos.[1] The sale included El Tiempo Latino (a Spanish language newspaper), the Fairfax Times, The Gazette, the Post Express free daily newspaper, Southern Maryland Newspapers, and several newspapers covering and for the U.S. armed forces.[38] Nash Holdings also took ownership of the Post printing plants in Springfield, Virginia; Fairfax County, Virginia; and Laurel, Maryland (the "Comprint plant").[38][39] Other assets included in the sale were the publications Apartment Showcase, Capital Business, Fashion Washington, Guide to Retirement Living Sourcebook, New Condominium Guide, and New Homes Guide; the internet sites TheCapitolDeal.com and ServiceAlley.com; and Comprint Military Publications (which included eight weekly newspapers covering local military bases, 10 annual guides to local military bases, and the Web sites DCMilitary.com, DCMilitaryEd.com, DCMilitaryFamLife.com).[39] Some real estate was also included in the deal, such as a one-story office building in St. Mary's County, Maryland; warehouses in Fairfax County, Virginia; two tracts of land in Fairfax County, Virginia; leased office space in Charles County, Maryland, and in Montgomery County, Maryland; and 23 acres of undeveloped land Charles County, Maryland.[39]

Not included in the sale were other Washington Post Company assets, including the Washington Post Company's downtown office building, the Post's Robinson Terminal facilities in Alexandria, Virginia; Post-Newsweek Stations; Cable ONE (a Phoenix, Arizona-based Internet and cable service provider); independent web-based media assets such as Slate Group (Slate magazine and its sister video magazine, Slate V), The Root, and Foreign Policy; social media marketing company Social Code; home healthcare and hospice provider Celtic Healthcare; and the energy parts supplier Forney Corporation.[9][40] After the completion of the sale, a press release announced the name change of the Washington Post Company to Graham Holdings Company (the change was made effective on November 29, 2013).[9][40]

In early September 2013, Bezos summarized his approach for the news organization—with a vision that recreates "the 'daily ritual' of reading The Post as a bundle, not merely a series of individual stories"—although he indicated that the experience was more likely to be created on tablet computers and less likely "on the Web".[41]

In September 2014, Jeff Bezos announced his decision to appoint Frederick J. Ryan Jr., founding President and CEO of Politico, to serve as Publisher and CEO of The Washington Post. This signaled his intent to shift The Post to a more digital focus with a strategy for expanding to a broader national and global readership. Ryan has continued to invest in news and technology while reducing expenses in legacy print areas.

Nash Holdings divested itself of a number of newspapers, and closed two others, in the summer of 2015. The company announced on June 12, 2015, that it would close the Montgomery Gazette and Prince George's Gazette effective June 18, 2015. The company also sold Comprint Military Publications and its Southern Maryland Newspapers group (which consisted of the Maryland Independent, The Enterprise, the Calvert Recorder, and the Enquirer Gazette, and their associated Southern Maryland Newspaper Web site) to Adams Publishing Group. The company also said it would sell the Fairfax County Times to Whip It Media, a locally owned company founded by the Times' former general manager, Richard Whippen.[43]

In the mid-1970s, conservatives called the newspaper "Pravda on the Potomac" because of its perceived left-wing bias in both reporting and editorials.[44] Since then, the appellation has been used by both liberal and conservative critics of the newspaper.[45][46] In 1963, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover reportedly told President Lyndon B. Johnson, "I don't have much influence with The Post because I frankly don't read it. I view it like the Daily Worker."[47][48]

As Katharine Graham noted in her autobiography Personal History, the newspaper long had a policy of not making endorsements for political candidates. However, since at least 2000, the newspaper has occasionally endorsed Republican politicians, such as Maryland GovernorRobert Ehrlich.[49] In 2006, it repeated its historic endorsements of every Republican incumbent for Congress in Northern Virginia.[50] There have also been times when The Post has specifically chosen not to endorse any candidate, such as in the 1988 presidential election when it refused to endorse then-Governor Michael Dukakis or then-Vice President George H. W. Bush.[51] On October 17, 2008, The Post endorsed Barack Obama for President of the United States.[52] On October 25, 2012, the newspaper endorsed the re-election of Barack Obama.[53] On October 21, 2014, the newspaper endorsed 44 Democratic candidates versus 3 Republican candidates for the 2014 elections in the District of Columbia, Maryland and Virginia.[54]

In "Buying the War" on PBS, Bill Moyers noted 27 editorials supporting George W. Bush's ambitions to invade Iraq. National security correspondent Walter Pincus reported that he had been ordered to cease his reports that were critical of Republican administrations.[55]

In 1992, the PBS investigative news program Frontline suggested that The Post had moved to the right in response to its smaller, more conservative rival The Washington Times, which is owned by News World Communications, an international media conglomerate owned by the Unification Church, which also owns newspapers in South Korea, Japan, and South America. The program quoted Paul Weyrich, one of the founders of the conservative activist organization the Moral Majority, as saying "The Washington Post became very arrogant and they just decided that they would determine what was news and what wasn't news and they wouldn't cover a lot of things that went on. And The Washington Times has forced The Post to cover a lot of things that they wouldn't cover if the Times wasn't in existence."[citation needed] In 2008, Thomas F. Roeser of the Chicago Daily Observer also mentioned competition from The Washington Times as a factor moving The Post to the right.[56]

In November 2007, the newspaper was criticized by independent journalist Robert Parry for reporting on anti-Obama chain e-mails without sufficiently emphasizing to its readers the false nature of the anonymous claims.[58] In 2009, Parry criticized the newspaper for its allegedly unfair reporting on liberal politicians, including Vice President Al Gore and President Barack Obama.[59]

Responding to criticism of the newspaper's coverage during the run-up to the 2008 presidential election, former PostombudsmanDeborah Howell wrote: "The opinion pages have strong conservative voices; the editorial board includes centrists and conservatives; and there were editorials critical of Obama. Yet opinion was still weighted toward Obama."[60] According to a 2009 publication, in the blogging community, liberal bloggers link to The Washington Post and The New York Times more often than other major newspapers; however, conservative bloggers also link predominantly to liberal newspapers.[61]

^Freund, Charles Paul (July 2001). "D.C. Jewels: The closing of a historic shop is a triumph of meaning over means". Reason. Retrieved November 5, 2009. ... Mrs. Edith Galt, who became the second wife of Woodrow Wilson ... She also figures in the most famous newspaper typo in D.C. history. The Washington Post ... Intending to report that Wilson had been entertaining Mrs. Galt in a loge at the National, early editions instead printed that he was seen entering her there.